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On Kent State Massacre Anniversary, Progressives Decry Repression of Student Protests
"The militarized repression of young people speaking out against a terrible war was shameful then and it's shameful now," said one state lawmaker.
May 04, 2024
As U.S. Republicans push for the deployment of National Guard troops to quell nationwide student demonstrations against the Gaza genocide, progressive lawmakers marked the anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre by condemning police repression of peaceful protesters and reaffirming the power of dissent.
"On the 54th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, students across our country are being brutalized for standing up to endless war," Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said on social media. "Our country must learn to actually uphold the rights of free speech and assembly upon which it was founded."
Fellow "Squad" member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that "54 years ago, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State."
"Students have a right to speak out, organize, and protest systemic wrongs," she added. "We can't silence those expressing dissent, no matter how uncomfortable their protests may be to those in power."
On May 4, 1970, 28 Ohio National Guard troops fired 67 live rounds into a crowd of unarmed Kent State students rallying against the expansion of the U.S.-led war in Vietnam into Cambodia. They murdered students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder—all aged 19 or 20. Nine other students were wounded, including one who was permanently paralyzed.
"The militarized repression of young people speaking out against a terrible war was shameful then and it's shameful now," New York state Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher (D-50) said on Saturday.
Protests against Israel's assault on Gaza—which according to Palestinian and international officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 123,000 Gazans—have spread to dozens of campuses across the U.S. and around the world. Police have been called in to break up protest encampments at numerous schools. Hundreds of students, faculty, and journalists have been arrested, sometimes violently.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), police stood by this week as a pro-Israel mob attacked a campus protest encampment before officers arrested peaceful protesters and supporters.
As law enforcement officials have tried to justify the crackdown by claiming "outside agitators" are behind the protests, some observers noted historical parallels.
"Watching what is happening at UCLA," Virginia state Sen. Mamie Locke (D-2) said on social media. "Old enough to remember Kent State, Jackson State, South Carolina State, and the dog whistles of 'law and order,' 'outside agitators.' So reminiscent of 1968."
On February 8, 1968, police shot 31 students—most of them in the back—at a protest against Jim Crow segregation at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, murdering three young Black men: Samuel Hammond Jr., Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith.
Eleven days after Kent State, police opened fire on a crowd of Black students protesting the bombing of Cambodia at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green and injuring 12 others.
"Our institutions must learn from these past mistakes to not use militarized responses against unarmed, peaceful student protesters by calling in the National Guard, bringing in state troopers, or deploying police in riot gear," Laurel Krause, the sister of slain Kent State protester Allison Krause, said in a statement marking the ignominious anniversary.
"We must not repeat the horrors of Kent State 54 years later," she added.
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Joe Scarborough’s Condescending, Irresponsible, and Ignorant Rant on Students Protesting Gaza War
The characterizations by politicians and cable TV personalities of the so-labeled pro-Palestinian protests by college students are over the top—and dangerous.
May 01, 2024
Sometimes in the morning with a cup of coffee I watch some of Morning Joe on MSNBC. I did on Monday (April 29) hearing Joe Scarborough’s condescending rant on college protests. On those today opposing Israel’s actions in the Gaza war, and on those earlier opposing the Vietnam war.
“Where are the adults!?” Scarborough asked after saying “it makes as much sense in 2024 having 18- and 19-year-olds running college campuses as in 1968, which is to say it doesn’t make any sense at all.” Any 18- and 19-year-olds protesting in 1968 and 2024 are not “adults” according to Scarborough, even though in 1968 they could be killed in Vietnam.
'Where are the adults?' Joe on continuing campus protests
Scarborough went on in his diatribe characterizing all so-labeled pro-Palestinian protestors as Jew-haters. His own brand of fearmongering as he blamed college administrators for, and I quote:
...letting their students and outside agitators run across the campus, shut down debate, scream whenever anybody tries to talk, reason to them, shout genocidal chants, hold up signs pointing to Jews saying Hamas’s next victims. Holding up signs talking about the “Final Solution.” Chanting constantly: “From the river to the sea”…Most of the students chanting it don’t understand that they are chanting genocidal comments.
Clearly Scarborough hasn’t read, or ignored, the article the day before in the Sunday Washington Post (available even earlier online) describing the experience of college students, in their own words, regarding today’s protests.
A 24-year-old Jewish student who talked to The Post reporters supported the protest at his school, UC-Berkeley, but with juggling two part-time jobs and coursework hadn’t joined the protest encampment there. But he said, his words, “things need to change in this drastic way to keep our eyes from averting away from what’s going on in Gaza” adding the “best way to do that is to mess up the status quo.” He rejected being a Jew meant automatic support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Of course, he doesn’t “want people to be hostages, either,” those taken by Hamas militants on October 7. But the children in Gaza also “don’t have any say in the fight,” so he has donated to funds supporting these Palestinian children.
As it is, Scarborough attributed antisemitism the dominant motive across today’s protest. His evidence? The fact protesters haven’t appeared concerned with known atrocities in other countries, mimicking Bill Maher’s related punchlines on Maher’s HBO show on April 26, Scarborough even showing a video clip where Maher asks why those protesting civilian deaths and starvation in Gaza today, in his words,
care so much about this particular cause? North Korea starves its people. China puts them in concentration camps. Myanmar brutalizes the Rohingya. Boko Haram kidnaps whole villages of women. The president of Burundi says Gays should be stoned to death because they, quote, ‘deserve it.’
On CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria on April 28, Columbia University professor Bruce Robbins had an answer for Maher (and Scarborough), saying:
I don't think that people think that Israel is unique example of evil in the world. I think what's special about it is it couldn't do what it's doing without the support of the United States. So students in the United States think we have a responsibility…I mean, the United States is not supporting North Korea…not supporting Syria...What's being done [in Gaza] is being done in my name as an American and…as a Jew.
Professor Robbins also said this about the phrase “From the river to the sea”:
So as I understand “From the river to the sea,” it means equal rights for all the people living between the river and the sea.
The role of the U.S. underlies protests today on the Gaza war as it motivated protests on the Vietnam war we participated in over 50 years ago. It was the U.S. engaged in the Vietnam carnage and drafting 18-year-old men to die there for a cause even their presidents knew privately was a losing cause. To needlessly die in Vietnam as civilians are needlessly dying in Gaza from bombings and starvation.
Here's how Professor Robbins characterized earlier pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in the discussion on CNN:
[Students] at Columbia, they have not shouted out slogans, chanted slogans in support of Hamas or the wanton destruction of civilian lives on October 7th…It's a little upsetting I think to everybody at Columbia that the mainstream media, as well as the politicians, have confused things that are chanted outside Columbia's gates with things that the Columbia protesters are saying…I haven't heard anything even remotely like that…that are being chanted outside the gates.
In her statement on April 29, Columbia University president Nemat “Minouche ”Shafik also said this: “External actors have contributed to creating a hostile environment…especially around our gates, that is unsafe for everyone.” Even Scarborough in his rant mentioned “outside agitators.”
In Vietnam anti-war protests there were isolated incidents of violence, but those didn’t represent the vast majority of protests. Similarly, in pro-Palestinian protests there may have been incidents of antisemitic remarks, and even occupying an administrative building as protestors did April 30 at Columbia University, but it’s an exaggeration (unfortunately, often purposefully so) to paint the majority of these protestors with that same brush.
Hyperbole concluding antisemitism is THE defining characteristic of students in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Now, on the other hand, antisemitism was quite evident in Charlottesville in 2017 when white supremacists shouted “Jews will not replace us.“
Perhaps President Joe Biden could help end the pro-Palestinian demonstrations if he took a firmer stand against the genocidal conduct of the war in Gaza under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s direction. Stopping delivery of U.S. military aid to Israel until Netanyahu changes course, for instance.
Instead of conditioning military aid, House Speaker Mike Johnson in his speech at Columbia University April 24, aside from speciously attributing all protesting students antisemitic, said if the protests could not be “contained quickly…there is an appropriate time for the National Guard…to bring order to these campuses.”
Remember Kent State? When National Guard killed four students on May 4, 1970 as students gathered to protest President Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, expanding the Vietnam war. Kent State University’s professors Jerry Lewis and Thomas Hensley provide a detailed account of events leading up to, during, and after the Guard opened fire with life rounds. Here is a segment of their account:
Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard. The closest student was Jeffrey Miller, who was shot in the mouth while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot, a distance of approximately 270 feet from the Guard. Allison Krause was in the Prentice Hall parking lot; she was 330 feet from the Guardsmen and was shot in the left side of her body. William Schroeder was 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when he was shot in the left side of his back. Sandra Scheuer was also about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when a bullet pierced the left front side of her neck.
You’re reading right. The Guard killed students more than a football field away.
After Kent State, demonstrations exploded across campuses leading to hundreds of colleges to temporary close.
Now think about the Guard being called in to break up the crowded close quarters of encampments pro-Palestinian protesters constructed on campuses across the country. What could possibly go wrong? A lot.
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Recalling the Bloodshed of 1970
The memory of the martyrs of Kent, Augusta and Jackson cries out for us to continue the struggle for which they died - to demand money for jobs and education, not for war. For an end to racist violence.
May 02, 2021
May 4, 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State University (KSU) in Ohio, that left four students dead and nine wounded. Like many events of the past year, it was overshadowed by news of the pandemic.
The Kent Massacre was a seminal event in violent times, as Washington continued to press on with an untenable war effort in Southeast Asia. For those that lived through those turbulent times, the bloodshed at home and abroad was indelibly stamped on our consciousness.
At KSU, we were peacefully protesting the US invasion of Cambodia, a major escalation of the war in Southeast Asia, when we were met by a barrage of bullets from the Ohio National Guard.
Ten days later came more shootings at Jackson State in Mississippi, which left another two dead and an unknown number of wounded. Jackson was a predominately Black school and received less attention than Kent.
But the campus shootings sandwiched an even more horrific yet largely hidden historical event.
Three days prior to the shootings at Jackson, in Augusta, Georgia, the burned and mutilated body of an incarcerated 16-year-old mentally-challenged Black youth, Charles Oatman, was dumped by his jailers at a local hospital.
After decades of racist abuse, the torture and murder of Oatman set off an angry rebellion.
In response, white police officers went on a shooting rampage that left six Black men dead - all shot in the back. Another 60 were wounded - mostly from indiscriminate shotgun fire.
Such violence directed at Black working people received sparse attention.
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The invasion of Cambodia and domestic shootings sparked massive protests and a national student strike. Over 400 campuses were shut down and occupied. Millions of people joined street demonstrations demanding an end to the war.
It became increasingly clear to the majority of active-duty GIs that Washington had sent them to die in an unwinnable war. Our movement reached deep into the army, extending solidarity with antiwar soldiers. The global antiwar movement became so massive that the US was forced to withdraw from Southeast Asia.
It was a historic victory for peace and justice.
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For over 50 years, the federal, state and local governments, along with the KSU administration, has attempted to rewrite the history of the antiwar movement and possible government involvement in the massacre.
On May 4, 1970, an armed FBI informant, Terry Norman, was in the crowd - photos document the police taking his gun after the shootings. And, in the intervening years there have been numerous revelations about FBI/CIA covert programs to disrupt the antiwar movement. Yet neither Norman nor his FBI handlers has ever had to face public scrutiny.
For 2020, in an astonishing insult to May 4 victims, KSU President Todd Diacon tapped a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ) official, Stephanie Danes Smith, to head the 50-year commemoration Advisory Committee.
Smith directed the largest section of the CIA, working directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, at a time when Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft were using CIA facilities to conduct the systemic torture of civilians at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other black-op sites around the world. Their policies included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual assault and numerous other loathsome tortures.
Smith's motto was, "Get there first and clean up your roadkill later!"
Following public outrage, Smith stepped down as the titular head of the committee. However, she and her most ardent supporters, including a handful of former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), remain as the central planners and official spokespeople for the commemoration.
Before the planned events of last May were cancelled, KSU squeezed in an official tribute honoring the members of the 1970 Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). ROTC was the US military presence on campus. "ROTC off campus" was a central demand of the student antiwar movement.
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58,220 US soldiers died in Vietnam and more than 300,000 were wounded.
Over 2,000,000 Vietnamese, Laotians and Kampucheans died under 15,500,000 tons of bombs and millions of gallons of defoliants that devastated an entire area of the planet.
KSU's attempts to hide the truth about the carnage abroad and government disruption of the antiwar and anti-racist movements at home are carried out under the rubric of an abstract "remembrance" - presenting the massacre as a lamentable failure to communicate.
This sanitization of the killings prompted a "Letter of Dissent," demanding an antiwar commemoration, initiated by 50+ leaders of the antiwar movement and signed by over 1000 antiwar activists of several generations - repudiating KSU's policies and spokespeople.
We oppose the secrecy surrounding the planning and financing of the yearly commemorations. We reject the honoring of the ROTC instead of the antiwar GIs. We demand an end to the coverup of government involvement in the shootings.
Washington and KSU want to bury our history. They want us to look away from the current US wars. Away from the permanent low-intensity warfare of drones, sanctions, embargoes and unending occupations. Away from the daily suicides of veterans.
But we cannot afford to look away. Today we face an unprecedented medical, ecological, social and economic crisis. We cannot continue to pour trillions of dollars into an insatiable war machine while the world goes begging for vaccines, or while young people drown in college debt, or while millions lack healthcare.
The resources of society must be changed to go towards healing our planet and ourselves. With permanent global warfare, suppression of liberation struggles, massacres of protesters, unending police executions of African Americans - is it really surprising that the US has created a culture that prompts alienated individuals to ape the use of armed violence?
The memory of the martyrs of Kent, Augusta and Jackson cries out for us to continue the struggle for which they died - to demand money for jobs and education, not for war. For an end to racist violence.
The martyrs of Kent - Sandy Scheuer, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Bill Schroeder - can best be honored by renewing the struggle to end to all US wars and occupations.
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Open Letter Calling for an ANTI-WAR COMMEMORATION of the KENT MASSACRE, May 4, 2020
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